Is Your Website Working For You Or Against You?
Do you have a website? Have you looked at it lately? Are visitors finding everything they need to know about you? Is it attracting new customers?
With all of the changes covid brought to the hospitality industry, there aren’t too many businesses that can get away without a website these days. However, you have to make sure your site is working for you and not against you.
If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you know that an effective website is a must-have. When done properly, your site will not only help to establish and grow your business but also drastically increase your bottom line. Your website can give you a competitive advantage and bring new traffic through the door. It serves as the face of your business in the online world and needs to make an impression.
Think of your website as an extension of your business that can be used to convert more leads into customers by being engaging, efficient, and showcasing all of the amazing things you have to offer. It’s usually the first thing people will see when they look for your business which means it needs to stand out.
It should be clear, concise, and compelling so that all visitors automatically want to visit your establishment. Every page should communicate the benefits of doing business with you and the impact that doing so will have on their lives. But just like there is a wrong way to eat cereal (milk first…who does that?!), there is a wrong way to create a restaurant website.
For a restaurant owner, an ineffective website or not investing in a website at all will hurt your business more than you realize.
Here are common mistakes restaurant owners make when it comes to their websites.
HAVING AN OUTDATED SITE
How many times have you heard about a restaurant, get excited to check it out, go to their website and it looks like it hasn’t been touched since 2004? Automatic boner-kill, amirite? An outdated website is a turn-off! It tells guests that you can’t be bothered to update your marketing materials and implies that you just don’t care. And if you don’t care about your restaurant’s image, what else are you letting slide? Food quality? Atmosphere? Staff?
Broken links, dated graphics, and old menus will make your website unattractive which may discourage visitors from returning and even worse may turn them off from visiting your restaurant at all. Not only that, if you’re paying for your domain and hosting for your site to exist with little to no return, you’re just throwing money away. Unless of course, you have a free site which implies you don’t want to invest in your business. Either way, it’s not a good look.
POOR CONTENT QUALITY
As a restaurant, quality content will play an important role in helping you to achieve your communication goals and connect with your customers. Engaging copy can go a long way towards keeping them reading and excited about what you offer. You should focus on publishing content that is easy to understand and appealing.
You have to remember that your website is sometimes the first experience a customer has with your business and is a key factor in attracting new customers and keeping existing ones. You want to make sure that you are providing them with what they are looking for, whether that is information about your menu items, your atmosphere, or something as simple as your hours of operation. It should all be there on your site and easy for them to find.
NO WEBSITE AT ALL
With all of the restaurants out there today it is almost impossible to go without a website. But I get it. It’s hard enough juggling the day-to-day functions of your restaurant without having to deal with creating an effective website. But who needs a website when you’re on social media, right? WRONG!
Building an effective website can feel like a challenge when you’re starting from ground zero. But it doesn’t have to be difficult. Let’s face it, the restaurant industry is very competitive. People will, and do, eat out every single day, and as an independent restaurant, your competition is every other restaurant in your city. Restaurant owners tend to think that creating a website would be too expensive or too complicated. But think about how much it could cost you in business to NOT have one. It’s an investment you need to make.
NOT OPTIMIZING YOUR WEBSITE FOR MOBILE DEVICES OR SEARCH ENGINES
One of the biggest money-wasting mistakes you can make as a restaurant is not leveraging your website design and optimizing it to convert visitors into paying customers. You can have the best food, the best staff, and the most loyal customers. But all of that doesn’t matter if you cannot convert your audience.
The majority of your audience these days is finding you on the go. They are deciding where to eat while in the moment. Did you know 90% of guests check out a restaurant before eating there? Not only that, more than 52% of ALL online traffic is from a mobile device. Therefore you must be responsive or you could lose potential guests.
Even worse, you’ve developed an amazing brand, posted high-quality photos, and created a killer website with compelling copy that’s optimized for mobile devices, but none of that will help you if nobody visits your website. If your site isn’t optimized for search engines, all of your efforts are for nothing. How do you expect customers to find you?
While it may seem like the whole world is on social media, there is still a large portion of the population that isn’t. You don’t want to miss out on them simply because your name doesn’t come up in a google search. Search engine optimization makes it easy for your target audience to connect with you online. More importantly, local search marketing is necessary so your name comes up on the map when potential customers are searching your area for a place to go.
So how do you make sure your website is working for you?
UPDATE YOUR SITE REGULARLY
At the very minimum make sure you have updated logos, photos of dishes, current menu, hours of operation, location, and contact information.
INTEGRATE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA
Incorporate your Facebook and Instagram on your site. Either have links at the top and bottom of your page so they know they can easily connect with you or go a step further and have your Facebook and Instagram posts feed into your page. This way you can ensure they are getting the most up-to-date information on your restaurant.
ADD A BLOG
You don’t have to do this, but a blog is a great way to drive more traffic to your site and provide guests with more information on your establishment. Add articles on your new chef, a popular menu item, your secret sauce, whatever you can to keep their eyes on your site and your guests engaged. The more people know about you, the more they get invested and want to see you succeed. Not to mention it is another opportunity for search engines to gather information on your establishment so you appear in more online searches.
PROMOTE SPECIALS AND NEWS
Make sure your site has your most recent promotions on it, whether it’s your happy hour, 2×1 burger night, or a weekly event like karaoke.
OPTIMIZE YOUR MENU
DO NOT just post an image of your menu online. This makes it unavailable to search engines. So, say you have a killer lasagna on the menu and someone does a search for the best lasagna in town — search engines will not be able to see that you even have lasagna on the menu if you are posting a pdf. You are missing out on a huge SEO opportunity in doing so.
USE EYE-CATCHING IMAGES OF YOUR FOOD ITEMS
While I am not a fan of the 15-page menu with images for each item when I sit down in a restaurant, your website is definitely where you want to have this. As I mentioned, most people will go to your website to determine whether or not your establishment is somewhere they would like to try. Having appetizing photos of at least some of your menu items (appetizing being the operative word) is a great way to get these people through the door so they know what to expect. Make ’em drool!
USE POSITIVE REVIEWS ON YOUR SITE
In addition to your website, users are also checking out review sites like Yelp as a determining factor on where to eat. 77% of diners prefer peer reviews to critic reviews. So instead of just having a link to an article published about your place years ago, it is also a great idea to have customer testimonials on your site. Sure, they can go to your website then head over to Yelp to check out the reviews but you want to keep their eyes on YOUR site. If they leave, you run the risk of losing them to your competition. Do the work for them and embed positive reviews on your site so they know you’re worth it. Do make sure the reviews are your most recent as most diners (about 50%) don’t trust reviews older than 14–30 days.
ADD AN ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEM
Even with the covid vaccine, people are leery of going out to restaurants. Or they’ve just become accustomed to ordering in. Either way, potential customers are often using apps like GrubHub or UberEats for delivery. Make it easy for them to order by getting a direct ordering link on your site. These 3rd party apps are also great for additional marketing as they give extra exposure and help you appear in more searches.
MAKE SURE YOUR BRAND IS ACCURATELY REPRESENTED THROUGHOUT THE SITE
The last thing you want is for your website to misrepresent your brand. If you have recently rebranded, or updated your logo, make sure your website has made these changes as well. Your website is one of the most important pieces of marketing material you can have. You have to make sure it is consistent with the rest of your online presence so people know they are dealing with the same place whether on Google or social media.
TELL YOUR STORY
Every brand has a story and your website is a great place to tell it. Make sure you have an “About” section so that people see that this restaurant is a labor of love with a history personal to you, not just another neighborhood cash cow looking for a quick return. Let them see who you are and why you should matter to them.
MAKE IT CLEAR AND USER-FRIENDLY
Most of all, your website should be easy to navigate and user-friendly. As I mentioned before, this is sometimes a guest’s only interaction with you. You want to make sure they can find the information they need quickly and easily. Providing an excellent customer experience should not be limited to your dining room.
In a nutshell, your restaurant’s website can make or break you. It can be the difference between someone new walking through your doors or going somewhere else. Make sure that the one you have is working for you, not against you. And if you don’t have one, now is the time!
